“Which was?”
“Worthless, stinking heaps of refuse. Just idiotic men we could take advantage of—men that deserved to be taken advantage of.”
His head tilted down, his gaze intent on her. “You do realize not every peer is an arse?”
Her head cocked to the side. “In my opinion, yes. Yes, they are.”
“Then you haven’t met the right ones.”
“Believe me, I’ve met enough. And I’ve suffered more entitlement by the bastards than anyone should have to endure. I don’t need to meet more to test my hard-won knowledge on the matter.”
“So why continue to stay at the Den? Why not leave that life?”
“And do what?” Her hand flipped up, palm to the roof of the carriage. “Understand that question has nothing to do with money. I now have enough saved to last me the rest of my days.” Her hand fell back down to her lap and her fingertips played along the bottom edge of the flask. “It is that I can think of nothing that would fill my days. That would keep me busy.”
“Why do you need to stay busy?”
“If my mind is occupied, I do not think about what could have been. How my life could have turned.”
He leaned forward, the stature of him taking up all the open space as he rested his forearms on his knees, his stare sharp on her. “What are you, Juliet, twenty-four? Twenty-five? Your life could still turn any which way you want it.”
She met his look, refusing to fight reality. “No. I have long since come to terms with what I will have out of this life.”
“For a woman clearly in control of every aspect of her world, you have very little appreciation of possibilities.”
“Appreciation?”
He leaned farther forward, stretching across the space between them, and his lips met hers. Soft at first touch, but within a moment, raw and hungry, pulling her into the moment, pulling her into him. He broke, his lips brushing against her with his words. “Appreciation of possibilities might at least let you enjoy what is right in front of you. A man who wants nothing from you except what you’re willing to give. A man who knows what to do with your body.”
She pulled her head slightly back, their breath mingling. “You know what to do with my body?”
“Aye. I do.”
Carnal bolts shot through her core at the wanton purpose wrapped in his soft burr. Damn. She wanted him. Could already almost feel him deep inside of her, pulsating.
Words choked from her throat. “You seem confident.”
“I am.” He dropped onto one knee on the floor of the carriage as his fingers buried into the hair at the base of her neck, tugging her head to the side as his mouth moved downward, his tongue trailing along her neck. “You seem curious.”
“I am.”
He chuckled into her skin, the rumble of it shaking her own chest. Her hands lifted, tentatively at first, for she knew if she started to touch him, she wouldn’t want to stop. Onto his arms. So big, stones that refused to flex against her touch. Upward her right hand drifted, wrapping around his neck, her fingers digging into the base of his hair, holding his mouth tight to her.
The kisses on her neck drifted further down and he tugged apart her pelisse, searching for the skin across the wide expanse of her chest. Each breath she drew a quiver against his onslaught.
His thumb swiped along the top swell of her breasts, searching underneath the bodice of her dress. Further down until he found a nipple and she exhaled a soft mewl, her back arching for more touch.
He tugged the top of her dress, short stays and chemise down, freeing her left nipple to the air. His mouth instantly captured it, teasing it with his tongue, rolling the sensitive nub along his teeth. Part pain, all pleasure.
She gasped a breath and sent her hands flying against his body, pushing off his coat and quickly unbuttoning his waistcoat. Down to his lawn shirt, she tugged at the back of it until he had to pause the onslaught on her breast to let her drag it off his head.
There. His naked skin under her hands. Heaven help her, she wanted to rake her teeth over every inch of it, lick it until the essence of him was an imprint on her tongue that would never leave her.
His fingers taking over on her breast, he worked his way upward, his mouth meeting hers in an indecent kiss that had her melting into him, her nails digging into the skin on his back to get his body closer to hers.
He stopped, pulling away from her, his eyes intent on her face. “This does not need to go farther. I’ll only do this if it is something ye want for yourself—not for me.”
“I want it.” She captured his face in her hands and locked her eyes with his. “In this moment, we are nothing to each other—you’re not paying me to accompany you. I’m not taking your money. This is just us. Just our two bodies needing to douse this fire between us.”
His mouth crashed into hers, brutally consuming everything she was offering. He wanted her in a way no man ever had. She could already sense that. Even with the fear of it, she wanted him all the more.
Her palms dragged up and over his shoulders until they were on his chest. She pushed him backward, pushed him until he moved, sitting back onto the bench opposite her.
Moving with him, not breaking the kiss, she straddled his lap, her hips digging forward, needing what was between too many layers of clothes.
She peeled off her pelisse, letting it drop behind her as his hands dove downward, tugging through the mess of her skirts until he found the bottom hem. His hands rough against the smooth of her skin, they found her calves, her knees, moving upward as he made sure no spec of her escaped his touch.
Inward along her thighs and his forefinger found her, dipping into her folds and drawing a tormented moan from deep in her chest. Her hips started gyrating, reveling in the instant friction of his exploring hands. Onto her nub, circling, and she gasped, her hands dipping down to unbutton the fall front of his trousers.
His cock spilled out into her hands, thick and hard and pulsating, and her breath left her. This was exactly what she wanted inside of her. This mass of him, demanding and taking her body to another place.
She pulled herself upward, breaking the kiss as she looked down at him. The blue specs in his eyes flashed in fire, consuming her just as much as his body was about to.
Centering herself above him, she slid down onto his shaft, her body stretching at the girth of him.
She paused when he’d buried himself to the hilt. It’d been so long. So long since she’d had a man inside of her. The pulse of it deep within her.
“Bloody hell, Juliet.” The grunted words fell rough from his throat.
“I know.” She did. She knew exactly what he felt because she felt it too.
Their bodies together were carnal flames licking toward the heavens.
She lifted herself, then dipped down, setting a slow pace that she sped. His fingers yanked down the bodice of her dress, freeing both of her breasts to him, and he took full advantage, grabbing her left nipple, then her right between his teeth, teasing them into taut submission.
Until he could take it no more and his head lifted away from her and his hips lifted with every stroke, driving up into her hard. He strained, the veins along his neck tight, his breath gasping with every thrust. To see the mass of him come—hell, she wanted it, wanted the power of him unleashed. Under her control.
She lifted her hips high, taking his cock to the very edge of leaving her, holding it there, making it excruciating for him.
She started to move downward, but his hands wrapped around her ribcage, stopping her motion, holding her in place.
She shifted, trying to slide down along his shaft. He wouldn’t allow it.
His teeth nipped along her chin as his stare found her eyes. Words rasped from his throat as he shook his head. “No. You’ll break before I will—I’ll not have it any other way.”
The command in his voice—the tortured intensity of it—sent a bolt to her clitoris, coiling it into an impossible fireball.
Hi
s right hand abandoned her ribcage and dove under her skirts, finding her folds, locking onto her nub. Four strokes. Seven. And she sank further down onto him with each swipe, the girth of him filling her, stretching her. Until his thumb swirled and she slammed down onto him, her body lost to the fire exploding her into thousands of fragments. The waves hit hard, her hips mercilessly lifting and sliding back onto his cock, each movement expanding the raw pleasure surging through her veins.
With a growl he suddenly yanked her upward, his cock leaving her, and she slid her hand around his shaft, pressing him hard along her throbbing folds. A groan shook his chest, the sound of it tapping into something deep and visceral in her gut, forcing her orgasm to contract hard just as he came.
Saints.
How in the hell had he done that?
Why?
Even with the viscount, she’d scraped together crumbs of pleasure only after he’d spent himself. She’d spent her whole adult life making sure men were pleasured first.
But this—this scared her. That Evan could make her come like that—extract from her every ounce of control she had—she couldn’t allow that.
Not again.
Control was the only thing that kept her sane.
And she wasn’t about to lose control to this man, no matter how vicious he made her body roil in pleasure.
{ Chapter 9 }
The tickle of Juliet’s heated breath brushed across his neck, the warmth of her body long against him.
Hell. He hadn’t meant for it to come to this, to take her in a bloody carriage of all things. But the draw of this woman was brutal. Her body. Her words. Her mind. A creature unlike any he’d ever known.
He damn well liked her, and he hadn’t even considered when he’d hired her the possibility that he might enjoy her company. She was an actress hired to do a job. That was all.
Except she was quickly becoming more.
It didn’t help that every time he looked at her his mind would wander to this very thing. His cock buried deep within her. His nose lost in the thick of her citrus-scented hair. He’d talked—more than he ever had—this past week just to keep her eyes centered on him. Set a smile on her face if he could. Almost every waking moment with her and he still wanted more.
Ridiculous. He was near to acting like a besotted young whelp.
The line between what they actually were to each other and what he wanted from her had blurred. It didn’t help that over the last week he’d begun to think of her as his.
Instinct had him protecting her as if she truly was his future wife. And when he’d seen that fop that had cornered her outside the carriage, he’d had a hard time not smashing the cull’s head in.
Disturbing, as he always had a tight rein on his reactions. A tight rein on his power. A tight rein on what he would or would not let enter his life—a woman.
All those reins had snapped when he’d seen that dandy grab Juliet. Set his hands on her. Set fear into her face. Made her pull a damned blade to protect herself.
His eyes closed, trying to dissolve the image of it from his mind.
“You’re good at this.” The murmur of her soft voice caressed his skin.
Evan chuckled as he turned his face to her. “Did you expect me to be bad?”
She pulled slightly away from him, her right hand slipping down along his left arm. Her fingers wrapped around his hand and she pulled it between them, holding it up. “Your hands are so big. How is it that they are not clumsy?”
His fingers stretched wide, wrapping into a fist, and then spread wide again. “I maybe know a tick more about women than you were giving me credit for?”
She grinned as a glow invaded her dark blue eyes, the raging storm usually in her irises now a sea quelled to gentle waves. A smile that was so different than the usual one she concocted on her face. This was a real smile, and the difference was remarkable, golden drops of the sun lighting her up from within. “I will strive to avoid assuming anything about you in the future.”
Leaning back slightly, she looked down between them and her fingertips went to a long scar that ran along his left ribcage. “You are battle worn.” Her fingers drifted across his bare chest, stopping at the many thin ridges of white puckered skin. “So many scars.”
His shoulders lifted. “Just buffoonery of youth.”
Her eyebrows lifted and she met his look. “These are buffoonery? I would hate to see what someone trying to actually injure you would leave behind.”
“There was no one to tell us to be careful growing up. So we oft times took things too far.”
Her forefinger trailed along a long scar that ran across his abdomen, the line that ended in a hook. “How did this one come about?”
“We were testing the swinging weights of the broadswords in the weapons room. My brother was determined to swing the one I had just mastered, but Gilroy lost his balance for the weight of it—he was a scrawny whelp.”
She nodded to herself as her fingers moved outward to his arm and another scar. “How about this one?”
“Gilroy wanted to shoot an apple off my head.”
“Your brother what?” Her voice lifted into a squeak.
“Yes, an apple off my head. But I refused, because I’m not an idiot.” Evan looked down at his arm, struck at how her thin, elegant fingers juxtaposed over the rough of his skin. “I compromised and offered him an apple off my forearm. He missed. That one did skim me rather deep.”
Her head shook slowly back and forth as her blue eyes lifted to him.
He could see it there, at the tip of her tongue, wanting to say something about his brother.
He’d seen that look a thousand times over.
He didn’t want to see it from her.
So he gave her one nod and then smiled. “I am famished. You? I already ordered us three plates of food too many. It’s most likely waiting for us, getting cold.”
She chuckled. “Yes. Starving.” She dropped his arm and extracted herself from his lap.
Moving backward to sit on the bench across from him, she righted the ties on her stockings and then fixed her skirts in the dim light of dusk filtering past the edges of the coach’s curtains.
Evan buttoned his trousers and shrugged into his lawn shirt as he watched her movements. “What were you even doing down here at the carriage?”
Her look lifted to him. “Oh, my bonnet.” Her eyes squinted, her gaze searching the bench on either side of him.
“Your hat?”
She spied it half under his left leg and pointed to it. “I came down to retrieve it. I thought to work on reshaping it tonight.”
Evan looked down to his left. A corner of the blue bonnet stuck out from under his black trousers. He lifted his leg, plucking the hat off the bench. It had been in pitiful shape before, but now it was crushed beyond repair.
The edges of his lips pulled back in apology as he held it out to her. “I’m sorry, I’ve utterly squashed it.”
“That you have.” She took the limp mush of fabric into her hands, her fingers tugging free one of the ribbons. “I don’t think that reshaping it is a possibility now, but I can try to salvage it.”
“Why not just give it up as a lost cause?” Foregoing his waistcoat, he snaked his arms into his tailcoat.
“Because the other bonnet I brought is hundreds of miles behind us now, sitting in a carriage with the rest of my luggage. And I cannot be presented to your grandfather without a hat.”
A chuckle flew up from his chest.
“Don’t laugh. I am already so wrinkled beyond repair that I look like the folds of a bloodhound. To forgo a hat would be disastrous.”
“Disastrous?” A smile on his face, he shook his head. “My grandfather won’t make the slightest blink on your lack of a hat. He does not notice such trivial things.”
“Trivial?”
“Aye.” His left arm straight out, he tugged long on the sleeves of his coat, straightening the wool. Deuced hard to properly get on a coat in this tight o
f a carriage. “We did have a conversation about how few females there are at Whetland Castle, did we not?”
“But your grandfather is an earl, surely there will be expectations?”
“My grandfather will be happy to see a charming lady in his library to compare to the portraits of past countesses. He wants nothing more than to commission the next countess’s portrait to hang alongside my grandmother’s painting.” He leaned forward and tugged down a fold of her skirt that was still caught high against the top of her boot. “Nessia, my brother’s wife, will be just as happy to see you, sans hat and all. Aside from her maid, I have gotten the sense that my sister-in-law is rather lonely at Whetland.”
After a quick up and down check of both their clothing, he opened the door of the carriage and hopped down to the ground. Rather than pulling the steps, he wrapped an arm about her waist and lifted her down to the ground.
She gave him an odd look that he wasn’t quite sure how to interpret.
He shrugged. “Efficiency.” He closed the carriage door and they started walking up the hill toward the inn.
“Tell me of your grandfather.” She looked up at him. “Is he demanding this—a wife for you—because he’s overbearing? Or is he holding something over your head?”
“No. And no.”
“Then he must be a great man to inspire you to go to such lengths to make him happy?”
He glanced at her, noting her fingers tugging at the edges of the crushed hat as she walked. “The earl is hard. He was once so big—tall and strong—but time has ravaged his body. He’s thin now. But he was once so formidable I thought he was Thor incarnate.”
“You were scared of him?”
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